INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Making Collections “Discoverable”

Ruth Fuller Sasaki’s Story

Poetry for Lunch?

Then & Now: 1938 to 2006

Exhibits and Events

Discovering the “Kitchen Debate”UNUSUAL RESEARCH BRINGS HISTORY ALIVE

f i a t l u x T H E L I B R A R Y AT T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A , B E R K E L E Y

I T S T A R T S H E R E .

Berkeley’s excellence is founded on its library.

Opened in 1868 with one thousand books, the

University Library now holds over ten million

volumes, and ranks as one of the world’s great

research collections. Join us in supporting the

growth and preservation of this stellar library.

continued on page 6

W I N T E R 2 0 0 6 • N O . 2

In 1959 Richard Nixon and Nikita Kruschev sat down to talk in the model kitchen of the American National Exhibition in Moscow. The Exhibition presented its visitors with an array of objects representing U.S. inventiveness—including a gold-anodized geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller—all in the interest of promoting intercultural understanding. But amid the polished cars, pleasure boats, voting machines and bottles of Pepsi-Cola, the conversation between the U.S. President and Soviet Union Premier escalated into a heated debate. Andrina Tran’s prize-winning paper uses declassifi ed government documents, contemporaneous travel guides, and a myriad other sources to uncover the context and ramifi cations of the “Kitchen Debate.”

Her paper won a 2006 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research, which is awarded annually to students whose research projects demonstrate use of Library collections and exemplify advanced information literacy and research skills. Delving into multiple accounts and analyses, her paper brings the Cold War context of the “Kitchen Debate” vividly to life.

Freshman Andrina Tran consulted declassifi ed government documents, among many other sources, to research her Library Prize-winning paper.

2 • fiat lux • Winter 2006

“Incunabula”— Latin for “swaddling clothes”— are all

forms of printing in the century of Johann Gutenberg. Berkeley’s

libraries have more than 400 of these works — easily double

that number if we extend the term to include the printing done

in Korea, China, and Japan by the year 1500. The glories of great

libraries are the infant forms of new knowledge in every field. At

Berkeley, chemists can find the first printing of the periodic table

of the elements by Dimitry Mendeleyev in his Russian textbook

of 1870. Physicists can find the German article of 1928 that gave

Ernest O. Lawrence his Eureka moment to imagine the cyclotron.

Serious students of California, here, begin with the transcribed

creation stories by native peoples and the earliest maps by

Europeans, showing California as an island.

Looked at in this way, it is fitting that “Google” and “Yahoo”— once the shouts in childs’ play — should

punctuate every conversation today about the future of libraries. UC libraries have joined an elite partnership with

Google, on the second anniversary of its precocious work to digitize collections. Google is the infant that takes our

minds to first principles.

Nothing is more fundamental—and more difficult to provide—than access to our 10 million books. In the

American tradition, libraries are supposed to be open to all, allowing everyone’s talent and curiosity to grow. But

no research library on a single campus can allow everyone through the door, at any time they choose to study.

Libraries assist from the moment a research question is formulated to the hunt for the last fact. But we have had no

way to expose everything in our collections that might be important. This is what digitizing millions of books will

accomplish. In a few years, the internet search engines will have helped us to open the full text of our books that are

out of copyright and make all of the print collections “discoverable” by indexing every significant word.

A peek at what our collections will look like is available at the Google partnership that we formed this summer:

www.books.google.com and the Open Content Alliance we joined in 2005: www.openlibrary.org .

Our millions of books are not going to languish on the shelves once they have been captured as bits. We expect

that our volumes will be found, borrowed, and read in growing numbers. I will return to the pages of “Fiat Lux “

(aptly titled for this subject!) to tell you how our infant enterprise is growing.

Thomas C. LeonardKenneth and Dorothy Hill University Librarian

U n i v e r s i t y L i b r a r i a n’s L e t t e rS W A D D L I N G C L O T H E S , O L D A N D N E W

Winter 2006 • fiat lux • 3

Admiring a library in a Kyoto temple was where Isabel Stirling fi rst conceived of this book. Surrounded by a collection that testifi ed to its owner’s energy and dedication to Buddhism, she became fascinated with the singular person who had collected them. It was time, she decided, for this woman’s story to be told.

Stirling’s Zen Pioneer: The Life and Works of Ruth Fuller Sasaki, published this fall, is a nuanced and compelling portrait of a woman whose decades of work in the U.S. and Japan encouraged the transmission of Zen to the West. Sasaki is the only Westerner—and the only woman—ever to be made a priest of a Daitoku-ji temple, the head temple complex for the Rinzai sect’s Daitokuji school. Three of her own writings, which radiate force, clarity, and warmth, are included in Zen Pioneer.

Scholarship and libraries were one thread that linked Ruth Fuller Sasaki and her biographer. When Stirling fi rst saw Sasaki’s impressive library in Kyoto, she was working as science librarian at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Since 1999, she has served as associate university librarian for public services at UC Berkeley. For the past several years, she has squeezed in her research and writing amid her busy professional career. Aiding Stirling’s research and understanding was her own longtime practice of Rinzai Zen.

Zen Pioneer is a story of culture and counter-culture, of friendship, rivalries, and generosity, all infused with devotion to Buddhist teachings and tradition. Stirling’s narration folds in fascinating details from the day-to-day activities of Sasaki in Japan as she mentored visiting Americans, worked on translations and her Zen practice, and threw legendary dinner parties that converted several Japanese roshis to Western food. Many individuals who helped usher Zen to the West appear in these pages, from Sasaki’s son-in-law Alan Watts to the scholar D.T. Suzuki, who gave Sasaki her fi rst meditation instruction.

Despite her many accomplishments, she is rarely referred to in books about Buddhism and its arrival in the West. “Although Sasaki was not a feminist,” Stirling says, “part of her story is about the male predominance. She coordinated, introduced people, networked, and facilitated—rather than taking the limelight herself.”

It is especially fi tting that Berkeley librarian Stirling has published an account of this landmark fi gure in American Buddhism, since it was a library that fi rst drew the two women together. As actor Peter Coyote commented, “The story of this remarkable, contradictory, woman— wealthy, autocratic, cultivated, and undeviatingly dedicated to the propagation of Buddhism in the West—is overdue. Ruth Fuller Sasaki could not have found a better translator for her life’s efforts than Isabel Stirling.” m

“Mother” of American Buddhism Portrayed in New Biography

Isabel Stirling, Berkeley’s associate university librarian for public services

“Ruth Fuller Sasaki

could not have

found a better

translator for her

life’s eff orts than

Isabel Stirling.“

— Peter Coyote

4 • fiat lux • Winter 2006

Spo

tlig

ht

This year marks a decade of Lunch Poems, the popular noontime readings in the Morrison Library. Hosting poets who span a wide range of styles and cultures, the series testifies to the Library’s importance as a cultural center for students, faculty, and the wider community.

This fall’s kick-off reading brought together faculty and staff from across the university to read a favorite poem. Professors from statistics and Slavic languages read their own translations of poems by Rabindranath Tagore and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, first treating the audience to the sounds of the original Bengali and Urdu. Words from Langston Hughes and Marge Piercy, a Handel libretto, and Korean poet Ko Un filled the room, each with their own unique eloquence.

Readers movingly described the talismanic quality of the poem they shared in the context of their own lives and concerns.

The readings through the rest of the year feature poets all the way from Iraq to right down the street in El Cerrito. Coordinator Kristen Sbrogna comments that the series’ popularity affirms how alive poetry is on the campus and in Berkeley. “When you’re here in Morrison listening to the poems, sitting on a couch between a current student and an alumna from ‘48, you get the sense that poetry is, and will continue to be, a vital aspect of our consciousness.”

The title for the series was borrowed from Frank O’Hara, whose 1964 Lunch Poems presented an informal image of the poet, improvising his poems while sitting in Times Square during his

lunch hour. Berkeley’s free, accessible readings adapted this cheerful notion that poetry could be as natural and pleasurable a part of the day as a meal. The series is under the direction of Professor Robert Hass.

For those far from campus, a handsome anthology published last year by UC Press offers a window onto the readings. The Face of Poetry collects poems by and photographic portraits of 46 writers, together with an audio CD of selected Lunch Poems readings. The revelatory black-and-white portraits are by celebrated photographer Margaretta K. Mitchell, who attended readings in preparation for the studio sessions with the poets. Edited by Zack Rogow, the book includes his illuminating introductions to each poet. The heart of the book is the poems, a wide-ranging array which manifests the diversity that has distinguished

Poetry for Lunch? READING SERIES DRAWS DIVERSE POETS AND AUDIENCES

Mary Catherine Birgeneau reads Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” to the audience at the September Lunch Poems in the Morrison Library.

Winter 2006 • fiat lux • 5

Fiat Lux, or Let there be light, is the motto of the University

of California.

The Fiat Lux newsletter of the Library at the University of

California, Berkeley, is published quarterly by the Library

Development Offi ce, University of California, Berkeley, Room

131 Doe Library, Berkeley CA 94720-6000. Telephone: (510)

642-9377. Email: give@library.berkeley.edu. Your feedback and

suggestions are warmly invited.

Kenneth and Dorothy Hill University Librarian: Thomas C. Leonard

Director of Development and External Relations: David Duer

Director of Annual Giving: Wendy Hanson

Director of Communications: Damaris Moore

Major Gifts Offi cer: Tracy Mills

Design: Mary Scott

Photography: Beth McGonagle, Margaretta K. Mitchell, and

Peg Skorpinski.

Printed on recycled paper and with soy-based ink.

the series from the beginning. Robert Hass’s foreword quotes Walt Whitman: “the greatest lessons of Nature through the universe are perhaps the lessons of variety and freedom.”

Easy access to the Lunch Poems readings from one’s own computer is only a click away. By logging on to Berkeley’s page at itunes.berkeley.edu, you can listen to over twenty readings from the series, along with courses and lectures. Berkeley’s offerings on Google Video (video.google.com/ucberkeley), just launched this fall, give viewers around the world access to a range of courses and events. The kick-off Lunch Poems reading from September, which was hosted by University Librarian Tom Leonard, had received 600 hits within a few weeks.

The Lunch Poems Reading Series was generously supported for seven years by Mrs. William “Rocky” Main (‘49), as well as by several campus units and departments. Main was a longtime Library friend and poetry lover whose anthology Hail to California (2005) collects poems about the University from alumni spanning several decades. Rocky recently passed away, and the Lunch Poems series is seeking continued funding from a number of sources. Donations may be made online at givetocal.berkeley.edu, or by calling 510/642-9377, and will be most gratefully received. m

AND YET THE BOOKS

Czeslaw Milosz

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,

That appeared once, still wet

As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,

And, touched, coddled, began to live

In spite of fi res on the horizon, castles blown up,

Tribes on the march, planets in motion.

“We are,” they said, even as their pages

Were being torn out, or a buzzing fl ame

Licked away their letters. So much more durable

Than we are, whose frail warmth

Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.

I imagine the earth when I am no more:

Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,

Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.

Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,

Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

Milosz taught at Berkeley from 1960 until his death in 2004. He won the Nobel Prize in 1980.

Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass.Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

“As smart and diverse a sampling of today's American poetry as you're apt to fi nd,” poet Steve Kowit said of this anthology of Lunch Poems readers. Margaretta K. Mitchell’s photographic portraits reveal each poet’s spirit.

“As smart and diverse a sampling of today's American poetry as you're apt

6 • fiat lux • Winter 2006

Andrina Tran, continued from page 1 UC Berkeley University Library Advisory Board, 2006-2007CHAIRMANRobert BirgeneauChancellor of the University

VICE CHAIRMANThomas C. Leonard ’73 (Ph.D.)Kenneth and Dorothy Hill University Librarian

PRESIDENTS. Allan Johnson ’62, ’69

CO-VICE PRESIDENTSMollie P. Collins ’65Shannon M. Drew ’50Robert M. BerdahlChancellor Emeritus

Albert H. Bowker Chancellor Emeritus

George W. Breslauer Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

Carol Clarke ’60 Whitney M. Davis Professor of History of Art Chair, Academic Senate Library Committee

Marilyn J. Drew ’53 David Duer ’68 Director, Development & External Relations

Charles B. Faulhaber Director, Bancroft Library

Carmel Friesen ’50 Jane H. Galante ’49 Richard L. Greene ’60, ’63 Robert D. Haas ’64 Watson M. Laetsch Charlene C. Liebau ’60 Raymond Lifchez ’72 William R. Lyman ’65, ’69 Marie L. Matthews ’52 Donald A. McQuade Vice Chancellor, University Relations

George A. Miller ’61 Harvey L. Myman ’70, ’92 Anthony A. Newcomb ’65 Emeritus Dean & Professor, Dept. of Music

Marie Luise Otto ’59, ’60 P. Buford Price Emeritus Professor, Dept. of Physics

Lila S. Rich ’55 Joseph A. Rosenthal Robert SchechtmanStudent Representative

Camilla Smith G. Stuart Spence ’52 Janet Stanford ’59 Carl J. Stoney ’67, ’70, ’71 Craig Walker Chair, Friends of The Bancroft Library

Phyllis Willits ’49, ’54 Thomas B. Worth ’72, ‘76 Theo Zaninovich ’64

HONORARY ADVISORY BOARDRichard C. AtkinsonPresident Emeritus, University of California

David Pierpont Gardner President Emeritus, University of California

Marion S. Goodin ’38, ’40 Ira Michael Heyman Chancellor Emeritus

Esther G. HeynsJ. R. K. Kantor ’57, ’60Emeritus University Archivist

Robert G. O’Donnell ’65, ’66 John W. “Jack” Rosston ’42 Past President

Katharine W. Thompson ’48 Sheryl Wong ’67, ‘68 Past President

Tran had been interested in the Kitchen Debate since high school, thanks to a visit to the National Archives and Records Administration in Laguna Nigel. There, her history class had explored selected records of the event. When she was assigned a research paper in Jennifer Burns’ history class, she immediately wanted to return to the topic. In the University Library’s vast collections, she was confronted by a much wider field of potential sources—together with the responsibility for her own selection and interpretation.

Tran’s first breakthrough was thanks to a Library web page on political science, one of the area pages developed by selectors to give researchers quick access to the best resources. A database she found there led her to a wide range of hitherto secret government documents on cultural initiatives. Now declassified, these documents enabled Tran to trace the changing meanings of cultural exchange, as the program’s emphasis varied over time from explicit propaganda to the cultivation of peace through understanding and contact between the two countries.

Journal articles and books, as well as letters traded between Nixon and Kruschev, Nixon’s memoirs, personal recollections of exhibition guides, cultural affairs officials, and congressmen were all part of Tran’s complex research process. She also consulted

the exhibition pamphlet, which was meant for public consumption, and revealed yet another side to the fair’s purposes.

Tran even located a travel guide to Russia that was published the same year as the staging of the exhibition. Its presentation of the Soviet Union as a “land of mystery” in which Americans could be “good will ambassadors” helped illuminate the prevailing social feeling of the time. Along with sources such as Life magazine, Time, and contemporaneous newspaper accounts, the travel guide clarified the exhibit’s influence on ordinary men and women, not only the statesmen and politicians that historical analysis typically focuses on.

These exhibits on Library Prize-winning papers allow other students to be inspired by their peers’ success on a challenging research project. The exhibit includes an actual recording of the Kitchen Debate; to download it, visit the Library’s Media Resources Center at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/videodir/kitchen debates.ram.

Winter 2006 • fiat lux • 7

T h e n & N o wA CAMPUS VIEW IN 1938 AND IN 2006

In 1938, the shops and businesses of Telegraph Avenue

extended another block and a half, right up to Sather

Gate. In UC Berkeley’s dramatic post-war growth during

the 1940s and 50s, campus rapidly expanded. Among the

projects were Sproul Hall and Sproul Plaza, named for UC

President Robert Gordon Sproul. During his 28-year tenure,

Sproul was instrumental in transforming Berkeley from a

regional school into one of the country’s leading research

universities. He is also remembered for the loyalty oath

controversy of 1949-51 and his strident anti-communism.

Ironically, the plaza that bears his name is indelibly

associated with passionate demonstrations and protests on

behalf of free speech. Full freedom of political and academic

expression and debate remains a Berkeley value to this day.

Winter 2006 • fiat lux • 7

mT H E L I B R A R Y A S S O C I A T E SJoin more than 6,000 other friends, book lovers,

alumni and faculty who recognize that the influence

of a great research library extends beyond the

university it serves to the many communities of

which it is a part.

The Library adds an astounding amount of

printed and electronic resources each year, including

rare and unique materials. In order to continue

to acquire, organize, and make accessible new

information, the Library depends on the support

of those who understand how important a world-

class library is to the education of students who will

one day shape our future. Your gift is crucial to the

continued excellence of the University Library.

Library Associates receive complimentary copies

of the quarterly newsletter as well as invitations to

special occasions at the Library. For more information

or to make a gift, contact us at (510) 642-9377 or

give@library.berkeley.edu. Or visit our website at

www.lib.berkeley.edu/give/

As Tran points out, the hope of softening the Cold War stand-off and of fostering understanding through contact between the two nations was bound to bear fruit on the individual more than the international level.

Sean McEnroe, the graduate student instructor for the course, comments that Tran’s “methods demonstrate sensitivity to the difficulties of understanding the relationship between the planning, staging, and public reception of this sort of political event… Andrina’s composition is so skillful that it at times conceals the complexity of the underlying research, but a close reading of the footnotes tells the story of her work.”

In retrospect, Tran says that her experience working on this paper has had a big impact on how she now approaches research. Rather than expecting to unearth a particular storyline, she now lets the information that she discovers indicate directions she can then explore and integrate. “A deliberate strategy is often not as rewarding as allowing the sources to guide the development of my own, unanticipated interpretation.” m

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BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 94720-6000

E x h i b i t s & E v e n t sImage Illustration Vision View:

Hidden Treasures from the Fine Arts Collections

Through January 2007

Bernice Layne Brown Gallery, Doe Library

The Fine Arts Collections housed across the

UC Libraries are the most comprehensive west

of the Mississippi. This exhibit features fourteen

cases of original prints, scrolls, artists’ books,

archives, and other treasures from Berkeley libraries

and the Berkeley Art Museum. From a 15th century

Book of Hours to a monograph encased in a plastic

pillow, a wide range of genres, periods and artists

are represented.

Lunch Poems

Under the Direction of Professor Robert Hass

Morrison Library in Doe Library

First Thursdays, 12:10 to 12:50 pm

Feb. 1, 2007: Dunya Mikhail

Mikhail immigrated to the United States from Iraq

in 1996 after encountering increasing harassment

over her poetry and its reflections on war and exile.

Mikhail’s The War Works Hard won PEN’s Award for

Poetry in Translation and was selected as one of

New York Public Library’s 25 best books of 2005.

March 1: Myung Mi Kim

Born in Seoul, Korea, Myung Mi Kim travels to the

root of language, connecting speech and culture.

Kim strips words to the bone, using fragments and

white space to enhance her themes of dislocation

and first language loss. She is the author of four

books of poetry.

April 5: Joanne Kyger

Kyger’s works often echo her practice of Zen

Buddhism and her ties to the 1950s rebel poets of

Black Mountain, the San Francisco Renaissance and

the Beat generation. Her latest collection is About

Now: Collected Poems.

May 3: Student Reading

One of the year’s most lively events, the annual

student reading features winners of the following

prizes: Academy of American Poets, Cook, Rosenberg

and Yang. It also includes students nominated by

UC Berkeley’s creative writing faculty, Lunch Poems

volunteers, and representatives from student

publications.

Jonathan Hammer, from “Where Has All the Time Gone?” Handmade book (1992), from the collection of the Berkeley Art Museum.